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There are several parallels between the acquisition of expert performance and the learning by students in high school and college courses. High school and college course experience includes prolonged, intensive practice on learning skills and knowledge in math and verbal related subjects, with the opportunity to receive feedback on learning progress through learning assessments. Students who continue on to higher education typically complete standardized tests aimed at measuring their reasoning performance in math and verbal related skills. The current work aimed to measure the relationship between completed courses relevant to the content appearing on standardized tests and the performance on those tests. This study has adopted the expert performance approach to examine the association between particular completed courses and SAT and GRE performance while increasing the precision of those estimates. Knowledge from research on different types of practice and statistical techniques aimed at addressing measurement issues from previous studies were utilized to obtain optimal estimates. The previous research has indicated positive associations between taking additional relevant courses, and engaging in additional effort to master learning in completed courses, on SAT and GRE performance. Additionally, a notable gender gap has been identified on standardized tests, with males scoring higher than females on math section performance. However, there has been a large degree of variation in the adequacy of measures of previous performance and no existing study has attempted to address bias in estimates related to issues of self-selection. In the current work, two studies were performed to attempt to optimally measure the size of the effects for the association between course taking and standardized test performance. In Study 1, the statistical techniques of hierarchical regression, two-stage least squares regression, and mixed modeling were used on the HSLS:09 dataset to obtain estimates of course taking and grade performance on the SAT-Math and SAT-Verbal. In Study 2, the techniques of hierarchical regression, propensity score matching, and quantile regression analyses were performed on a novel college sample to estimate the role of course taking, effort, and previous performance on the association between completed college major and changes in GRE-Quant and GRE-Verbal performance. Additionally, a secondary focus of examining the potential causes of the large gender gap in GRE-Quant performance was undertaken in Study 2. The results of Study 1 and Study 2 indicated support for engaging in a challenging course curriculum and maximizing effort in completed courses to optimize the benefit of course experience on standardized assessments. Evidence emerged for a unique benefit for completing courses including learning skills at a level higher than the level of content being tested directly on the SAT and GRE. The gender gap in math performance was substantially smaller when controlling for previous performance and differences in course taking. Each of these results are discussed in terms of their implication for how students may utilize course experiences to maximize their score on standardized tests and benefit from insights from studies of purposeful and deliberate practice mediating the acquisition of expert performance. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Psychology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester 2017. / July 11, 2017. / Delliberate Practice, Educational Psychology, Higher Education, Psychology, Standardized Testing / Includes bibliographical references. / Karl A. Ericsson, Professor Directing Dissertation; Elizabeth M. Jakubowski, University Representative; Richard K. Wagner, Committee Member; Colleen M. Kelley, Committee Member; Colleen M. Ganley, Committee Member.

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This thesis examines how we store probabilities, how remembered probabilities affect decisions, and how memory for probability judgments determined by a single event interacts with implicit probability judgments formed by exposure to repeated events. The first experiment deployed a novel paradigm in the form of a card game to examine how memory for stochastic events influences choice following intervening decision tasks. The second experiment investigated memory for the context of game trials. The third experiment modified an existing memory research paradigm in order to examine the ability to remember probabilistic information following a single presentation of an event with a visible sample space. Increasing retention interval has a significant, systematic, and degrading effect on optimal choices based on judgments of relative probability, but reinforcement is somewhat more robust. However, memory for simple probabilities derived from events with clearly presented sample spaces is more accurate. Implications and future research are discussed.

The color naming (Stroop) and picture-word interference (PWI) paradigms play a pivotal role in theorizing about cognitive processes in general, and language production in particular. Despite their assumed similarities, there exist discrepancies. In this study, I compared the effect of distractor word frequency between Stroop and PWI paradigms (in PWI picture naming is faster for high frequency than low frequency word distractors; Miozzo & Caramazza, 2003). In five experiments, I confirm the presence of DFE in both Stroop and PWI paradigms when the naming latencies are longer but the absence of DFE in both paradigms when the naming latencies are shorter and found that when naming latencies are fast, the distractor words are most likely processed to the phonological level by the time targets are named in both paradigms in the last experiment. Thus, my results are consistent with the assumption that the two paradigms operate in the same manner.

Neural priming for same and different exemplars and viewpoints of objects was examined in two experiments using functional magnetic resonance imaging. In line with previous studies, viewpoint- and exemplar-specific priming was observed in the right fusiform gyrus (RFG). In contrast to some studies, viewpoint- but not exemplar-abstract priming was observed in the left fusiform gyrus (LFG). In the first experiment, neither task-demands nor visual similarity affected priming in the LFG. However, the RFG, including an area specialized for processing faces (the fusiform face area) was sensitive to the visual similarity of exemplar pairs. The second experiment explored this unpredicted result, but did not replicate the visual similarity effects. Results suggest that RFG and LFG are differentially sensitive to changes in viewpoint and are unaffected by task demands or visual similarity.